– On the Road –

nothing else. Guinea fowl patrolled the lawns. A wire rabbit sculpture prayed to the setting sun.

I woke to bright dawn. A hawk was sunning itself on a fence post at the end of the garden. The world had been transformed during the night, from overcast to frosty and brilliantly bright. Ice flamed and flickered in the ditches.

The dirt roads that ran behind the house were hard going, frozen ditches and crackling frost. I stopped and pushed my bike often. Eventually the old farm tracks gave way to tarmac, to the most perfect cycling road. I slipped through this tree-lined tunnel in a blur, the wind whipping tears from my eyes. The rocket-like spire of Salisbury Cathedral flickered through the trees to my right. Pigeons and pheasants broke around me, following me along the road. A hawk flapped into the air. In the distance I could hear the faint pop-pop of shotgun fire.

I arrived in Salisbury as the bells were striking ten, but I left almost immediately to cross Salisbury Plain. The Plain has since before Thomas’s time been a military training area, and hasn’t been developed much at all. The vast expanses of it fell away in every direction. The sun was beaming down, but a cold wind blew at my back. Just before I arrived in West Levington, I came across a plaque:

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